Tag: parents

Kimberly Rae Miller has written a thoughtful and touching account of her life as the child of loving, supportive parents who also struggled with hoarding. From the outside, her life in a working-class community on Long Island probably seemed typical to most of the people around her–because even as a young girl, Miller put tremendous effort into creating that impression to protect her family.

In fact, she lived in homes that were packed to the brim with papers, broken appliances, and more–homes in which the plumbing didn’t work, and repairs went unmade, and fresh food was an impossibility.

Hey, it could be worse. It could have been the John Wayne version. Now that would have been a long time since Date Night.

And that was our last movie, not our last evening out. We did go out to dinner for our anniversary in March, and had a wonderful time. That dinner, by the way, was something we’d been talking about doing since Mr. Sandwich’s birthday. In 2010.

Do I think that parents need to connect with each other in ways that aren’t focused on their children? Yes, absolutely. Do I think that we need to have Date Night to do that? No, not in the slightest.

When Mr. Sandwich and I started dating, he traveled to meet my parents. (This was our third date. It didn’t indicate anything about our relationship, it’s just how things went.) They showed him around town, and at one point, he said, “I feel bad leaving your parents in the car.” I said, “Oh, don’t worry about them. For them, retirement is one big date.”

Mr. Sandwich took that to heart. We have what we call “Home Depot dates.” What do we do? We go to Home Depot. To us, spending time together is a date, no matter who else is there, or where we are.

Our entire relationship was long-distance. What that meant was that when we actually managed to be together, what we wanted to do was be together. One of us would fly across the country. We’d spend the day meeting friends and touring the local area. In the evening, we’d go back to the apartment and eat pizza or Chinese food while watching TV shows we both liked, and talking about them.

But at some point, no doubt, Amazon Prime streaming will come to our rescue, and we’ll catch up on what we’ve missed. It won’t be the same as the big screen, but we’ll see them together and talk about them.